Juan Ignacio Molina: The World's Window on Chile (review)

Juan Ignacio Molina was one of the more notable of the Creole Jesuits exiled from Latin America in 1767. In the Papal States he wrote several natural and civil histories of his homeland, Chile, and thus became the "World's Window on Chile." Ronan's work on the life and works of this exiled Chilean Jesuit constitutes a new and important contribution to the body of literature on the exiled Jesuits. Earlier authors who had written on the topic—Miquel Batllori, Antonello Gerbi, and Ruben Vargas Ugarte—covered the exiled Jesuits in a general way. With the exception of the Peruvian Jesuit Juan Pablo Viscardo y Guzmán, there were few detailed works on individual figures. But Ronan himself significantly filled in that vacuum with his masterful biography on Francisco Clavijero (1977), the famous exiled Mexican Jesuit. This current study complements that work. Ronan acknowledges his indebtedness to Walter Hanisch, a Chilean Jesuit who had written considerably on Molina. But Hanisch's writings, though thoroughly academic, were generally very brief sketches on aspects of Molina and did not reach a wide audience outside of Chile. Ronan's work, much wider in scope and more thoroughly documented, will certainly reach that wide audience.

Ronan traces Molina's life from his early Chilean years to his exile in Bologna. At the same time he analyzes in depth all of Molina's various histories of Chile. Molina's natural history of Chile includes detailed descriptions of its mineral wealth, its fauna and flora, all based on the Linnaean system of classification. He describes the Araucanians (today Mapuches) in great detail, their customs and traditions, especially for the benefit of European readers, and in so doing sought to dispel many of the fantastic myths and distortions created by certain pretentious European authors who wrote about America without ever having been there. At the same time Ronan notes that Molina tended to romanticize the Araucanians, and to present a somewhat simplistic view of Araucanian-white relations. Ronan analyzes one by one all of Molina's sources, some of whom Molina did not acknowledge. Readers will find it interesting to note that Molina was also a great admirer of Washington and Franklin, a fact that attests to his broadminded intellectual curiosity.

Molina is also famous for a modest contribution he made to the theory of evolution, a contribution which also attracted unwanted attention from the Roman Inquisition. Ronan covers in detail that crisis in Molina's life. Molina never returned to his homeland when the Society of Jesus was restored in 1814, probably because of his advanced years and the fact that he was a well-respected scholar in Bologna. But he also never re-entered the Society of Jesus, even though he was a priest and on good terms with other exiled Jesuits. In Ronan's book it is not entirely clear why Molina chose not to re-enter the Society, if presumably that option was a real possibility. Furthermore, as the author notes, some scholars have seen a divorce between Molina the Christian and Molina the scientist. Ronan is at pains to show that no such divorce existed. Nevertheless, as the author admits, Molina's references to God all seem to fit eighteenth-century Enlightenment and even deist categories.

Ronan does not hesitate to qualify Molina as the most "outstanding" of the exiled Jesuits, including Clavijero, for his intellectual accomplishments. Ronan's study of Molina, his life and works, is balanced, critical, and solidly documented. It will undoubtedly become the standard work on Molina, as it deserves to be, for many years to come.